


all the places your life used to be in

by noctiphany



Series: little beasts [99]
Category: DCU (Comics), Midnighter (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Bipolar Disorder, Depression, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Suicide Attempt, little beasts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 11:21:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21355435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noctiphany/pseuds/noctiphany
Summary: M just doesn't get it. He's soclose.
Relationships: Apollo/Midnighter
Series: little beasts [99]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/271950
Comments: 11
Kudos: 69





	all the places your life used to be in

**Author's Note:**

> Apollo backstory
> 
> \- - -
> 
> PLEASE READ! MORE DETAILED NOTES ON TRIGGER WARNINGS:
> 
> \- There is an overdose/suicide attempt in this fic. No death, but there is hospitalization.  
\- Poor mental health habits, such as purposely going off meds. 
> 
> National Suicide Prevention Lifeline  
Call 1-800-273-8255  
[Online Chat](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj5ppCSttrlAhXix1kKHfHqCWwQ0kMoADAAegQIEBAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.suicidepreventionlifeline.org%2FGetHelp%2FLifelineChat.aspx&usg=AOvVaw3CvQlYDvUom1qC1wNu869h)

“Baby, please,” M says, rolling over at three am only to see the lamp in the corner still on, Apollo surrounded by a stack of folders and files and miscellaneous papers, photos that he doesn’t even know where Apollo _ got _. “Apollo. Come to bed. It’s three in the morning, we have to be up in two hours.” 

“I’m fine,” Apollo says, flipping through the folder in his hand, then picking up another one. “You should go back to sleep, you have to be up in two hours.” 

M closes his eyes and sighs. The _ have you been taking your meds _ sticks on his tongue. Apollo hates it when he asks him that and M hates asking too. He feels like it’s none of his business, but --

They’re married now, so maybe it kind of is. He’ll ask him in the morning, he decides, on the way to the precinct. When Apollo’s in the car and can’t run away from him or wave him off. That should probably be a sign, right there, that he has to _ trap _ his husband to get an answer out of him, but M refuses to think of it like that. 

M loves Apollo more than life. He just wants to help him, whatever it takes. 

: : : 

Apollo bristles at the question, starts scratching at his arms when he realizes he’s trapped in a moving vehicle and can’t escape this time. 

“I’m fine,” he says again, hoping that if he says it enough times M will just fucking drop it already. He _ is _ fine. He knows he’s not sleeping a lot and that it looks bad, always pouring over the Wayne files, but Apollo is fucking _ close. _He’s so close he can practically smell it. At night, he dreams of it, Wayne’s disgusting face behind bars, visualizes his whole crew walking single file into supermax after he busts them. 

After _ they _ bust them, M would correct him if he could hear his thoughts. But the thing is, M isn’t really doing that much work on the case. Sometimes Apollo feels like he doesn’t even _ want _ to bust them. That’s why he’s doing so much work all the time, keeping tabs on Wayne and his kids, following them around with the secondhand camera he got at a pawn shop. If no one else is going to do the work, he has to pick up the slack. 

“I know you’re fine,” M says, calm, measured, reaching over and taking Apollo’s hand in his own, rubbing his thumb over the ring on Apollo’s ring finger. “But have you?”

The answer, of course, is no, he hasn’t. He didn’t do it on purpose, not at first. He just sort of got wrapped up in the case and forgot about them for a few days. That’s when he started needing less sleep and that’s when he realized how much fucking work there still was to do. Then, it just made sense that if he wasn’t sleeping, he could pour over old case files and cold cases all night. Since everyone else was slacking on their end, it made sense for him to go buy a camera and stake out some of Wayne's popular haunts on his days off. No, it wasn’t technically allowed, but there was no way anyone would know he was there, not even M knew. Apollo just -- he had to do it. He had to get the proof for _ himself, _ even if he never actually got to use it in court. He had to know. 

“I ran out a few days ago,” Apollo lies. “Been too busy to get them refilled, but I’ll do it today. I promise.” 

M nod and picks Apollo’s hand up, kisses the back of it, turns it over and kisses his palm. “I love you,” he says and Apollo leans across the car as they sit under a traffic light, takes M’s cock out of his pants and swallows him down. 

“It’s fuckin’ daylight,” M gasps, but the windows _ are _ tinted, and Apollo’s tonguing his slit and when the light turns green, M puts the car in the drive, the hand not on the steering wheel in Apollo’s hair. 

He comes somewhere in between the high school and the precinct, swearing like a sailor as Apollo slurps at his cock, licking it clean before tucking him back in his pants and zipping him up. 

“Jesus fuck,” M pants. “The fuck’s gotten into you? Road head?”

Apollo just smiles and brings his thumb up, wiping a drop from the corner of his mouth. “I just love you too,” he says, then leans in and presses their foreheads together. “Forever, right?” 

“Yeah,” M says, slate blue eyes staring into Apollo’s golden ones. “Never fucking getting rid of me, baby.” 

: : : 

M finds the prescription bottle in the glove compartment of Apollo’s car a few weeks later, never opened. 

“Son of a bitch,” he curses and slams the door. 

: : :

M just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get how fucking close he is. He doesn’t get that just because _ he _ needs so much fucking sleep, Apollo is fine without it. He works _ better _ without it, actually. He can get so much work done this way. Last week he was able to hop on a jet and follow one of Wayne’s kids to Prague. If he’d been like everyone else, then he wouldn’t have been able to do that. 

He just doesn’t get it. 

No one fucking gets it. 

He’s so close to bringing Wayne’s whole crew in and he keeps getting shit for it. Don’t they know how close he is? Is that not what his fucking job is? They should be _ thanking _ him, not giving him “mandatory vacation.” It’s fucking ridiculous. 

It’s not like he needs the captain’s approval for what he does in his free time, anyway, so on his “vacation”, Apollo ramps up the surveillance. He buys an old, inconspicuous car and parks a block or so away from the manor. That’s what he’s heard the kids call it on the wiretaps he’s managed to place. Even if they didn’t last for too long, Apollo still got a bit of information out of them. Mostly, he just heard Grayson’s voice over and over. The kid talked so fucking much Apollo didn’t understand how the rest of them could stand it. He’d heard that kid’s voice so many times lately he was hearing that in his dreams now too. 

Once, after three days of running on about one and a half hours of sleep, Apollo had fallen asleep behind the wheel of the Pontiac and when he’d woken up, someone had drawn a smiley face in the condensation on the window, a little _ hi _ right next to it. It could have been anyone, Apollo figured, until he got out of the car to stretch and smelled the smoke in the air, looked up to see black clouds in the distance. A few moments later, sirens and firetrucks sped by him, headed to the scene. 

A few weeks later he found out it was the home of one of the foster family’s he’d been placed with when he was a kid, Paula and Jeremiah Lawrence. Apollo had bounced around to dozens of foster homes when he was a kid, but he remembered this one pretty well. It was the couple who were foster parents for the check only and spent it on gambling and booze instead of food or clothing for the half dozen foster kids they had living with them. It was the one where none of the bathrooms or bedroom doors had locks and _ Mommy, _always smelling of peach schnapps, frequently forgot which room was hers. 

Apollo picked his beer up and threw it at the wall, just sat there and watched the liquid drip down the paint he and M had put there when they’d first moved in. There had been the worst wallpaper there before, something from the 70s. After they’d finished painting it, Apollo had bent M over their new kitchen table. 

When M comes flying down the stairs to see what the noise was, Apollo feels a knot form in his stomach. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He can’t --

He wishes he could stop fixating on the case. _ Obsessing. _It's ruining his life, he knows it. The sick part is, he doesn't even think he really _cares. _He might've at first, might've started out with the noble goal of taking a killer off the street, but it hasn't been about that in a long time. All it is now is obsession. He wishes he could stop, but Apollo isn't sure he can. Hell, he doesn't even remember who he used to be before he took this case. If he lets this go, what then? What's he even good for?

“Hey,” M says, walking up to him. “What the hell happened?” 

Apollo doesn’t say anything; he can’t. He just reaches out and pulls M close to him, wraps his arms around his waist and presses his face into his stomach. He smells good, like the fabric softener Apollo made him start buying when they first moved in together and his own cologne, and god, he’s missed him. 

“I’m sorry,” Apollo says, crying suddenly, with no warning or preamble or anything. “I’m -- Are you going to leave me?”

“Fuck,” M says sharply, dropping to his knees and taking Apollo’s face in his hands, kissing him messy and desperate, then pulling back, squeezing Apollo’s wrists between his fingers and tugging them against his chest. “My first, my last, my everything, remember? You’re mine until the end of time and --”

“I am yours,” Apollo murmurs quietly, smiling slightly as he remembers the vows they wrote together, the night before their wedding. “As long as you’ll have me.”

“Forever,” M says. “I’m going to have you for fucking ever.” 

Apollo chokes back a sob and nods.

“Come on, baby. Let's go to bed.” M says, standing up and offering him a hand. “Please?”

Apollo looks up at him, then he looks back at the papers strewn across the table, the myriad of photos and crazy, manic notes he's scrawled all over everything.

Then takes M’s hand. 

: : :

Apollo starts taking his meds again. Starts sleeping again. He cooks dinner sometimes and gets a haircut and occasionally, he doesn’t think about Wayne or his boys unless he’s at work. M bought him a houseplant that he named Jenny for some inexplicable reason and Apollo loves her, even if she’s a needy little shit. Life is going pretty well, considering. He goes to therapy twice a week, one on his own and once to a group. He doesn’t love the group, but he goes because M thinks it will help and Apollo wants to make him happy more than anything. They celebrate their second anniversary on Valentine’s Day and Apollo makes love to him in their bed, goes so slow it’s maddening, draws it out until M is a shaking, trembling, begging mess. He tells him he loves him more than life, more than anything. He wants to build a life with him. They talk about getting a dog together. About maybe, one day, getting more than that. 

Then there’s a car down the street he doesn’t recognize. 

Then there’s a fire three blocks over.

Then, a minor drug lord is found in a river, a casino owner found face down in his fried chicken, double tap to the back of the head. 

Then Apollo stops sleeping again. 

Stops eating.

Stops taking his meds.

They just slow him down, fog everything up. He was so close before, he knows he’s almost there. It’s just right out of his reach. He’ll go back on the meds just as soon as he busts them, as soon as this is finally, _ finally _ put to rest. Then. Then he’ll sleep. 

: : :

They fire him at the end of January. 

Turning in his badge and his service weapon is one of the most humiliating, shameful things he’s ever had to do. Before, they’d given him that badge, trusted him with that weapon because he’d earned it. He remembers exactly how it had felt, the pride he’d had in himself that day. He’d done the unthinkable, made something of himself when everyone in his life had always told him otherwise. He wasn’t useless, wasn’t worthless, wasn’t too crazy or a waste of space. He was going to help people. He was going to make a fucking difference. 

His badge makes a sharp clacking sound when it hits the chief’s desk and Apollo winces. He can't look at anyone else in the room, can't bear to see the disappointment on their faces. He already knows they are, he doesn't need a visual reminder of it. 

M drives him home and they're silent all the way there, though Apollo is thankful for the hand covering his, the thumb rubbing back and forth over his wedding ring. At least he still has M, he thinks. At least he hasn't fucked that up too. 

: : :

Apollo starts taking his meds again, something new even, but it doesn't seem to matter. Sure, he's sleeping again. About eighteen hours a day. Sometimes he wakes up when M gets home from work, sometimes he doesn't get up until M is heading to bed. 

They dont talk about work because its too depressing and also, M's not even allowed to talk to him about it. That's part of the termination agreement. Apollo's not to come within one thousand feet of Wayne, Wayne’s home, or any of his crew. If he does, he’ll be arrested. Every time Apollo thinks back to that day, the papers he’d had to sign, the _ disgust _ in the chief’s voice, he wants to throw up. Sometimes, he does. 

Every morning, M leaves him a note by the bed. _ Don’t forget to take your meds. Love you, M. _

Then, one morning Apollo wakes up and sees the note and he’s not depressed anymore, he’s just pissed. 

Fucking pills.

Fucking _ useless. _

They’ve never done a goddamn thing for him, especially not now. Everyday he wakes up and he wishes he fucking hadn’t. He hasn’t eaten anything that wasn’t a saltine cracker or a bowl of cereal in God knows how long. He hasn’t fucked his husband in months. Everything’s gone to shit and it’s all because of fucking Wayne and now Apollo can’t even _ do _ anything about it. He just has to accept the fact that Wayne won. He ruined his fucking life and he’s just going to get away with it, just like everything else. 

Apollo gets up and snatches the bottle of pills off the bathroom counter, tears the lid off and pours them into the sink. They’re useless. They’re not helping one bit. Why would he continue taking them? 

Then again, why would he do anything? What the fuck is the point of any of this? Yeah, he loves M, but it’s not like his life wouldn’t be phenomenally better without Apollo fucking it up all the time. It’s not like he can be happy coming home to a useless piece of shit who lays in bed all day. He’s pathetic. Worthless. Useless. 

Too much.

Too crazy.

Too -

Apollo scoops a handful of the pills out of the basin of the sink and pours them down his throat, sticks his head under the faucet to swallow them down. Then he walks into the living room and slumps down the wall, plucks one of the dead leaves from the plant M gave him and bangs his head against the wall behind him. He couldn’t even keep a fucking ficus alive.

Fumbling around in his pockets, Apollo pulls his phone out to send M a text. He’s probably busy at work, probably won’t get it for a while. But it’s okay. He’ll be okay. He's not like Apollo. He's strong. He'll be fine.

_ I’m sorry, _ Apollo texts, twirling the ring on his finger before lying down on the carpet, the room starting to spin a little.

_ I’m just sorry. _

: : :

M finds him before it’s too late, gets him to the hospital, and they end up pumping everything out of him and feeding him a bunch of things through an IV to stabilize him. They’re worried about his liver, Apollo thinks, but he only gets bits and pieces of conversation between slipping in and out of consciousness. 

When he wakes up, really wakes up, M’s still holding his hand, still by his bed. Apollo doesn’t have to wonder if he’s been there the whole time, he knows. He knows M has. 

Just as he knows he’s the worst person in the world. 

“I’m sorry,” he tries, but it barely comes out, his throat too dry and scratchy. But M just looks up from where his head was resting on the edge of the hospital bed and -

Smiles. 

After everything Apollo put him through, after making him sit bedside and worry for days if he was going to make it through, after embarrassing him at the precinct like that, his husband is _smiling_ at him. 

“Until the end of time,” M says, lifting Apollo’s hand and placing a kiss to the side of it, careful to avoid the IV needle. 

“For as long as you’ll have me,” Apollo manages to get out, hoarse, scratchy voice and all, and a tear streams down M’s face, followed by another, then another. 

“Forever,” he says. “Fucking forever.”


End file.
